Brawl healing begins
INDIGENOUS business leaders and veterans are ready to heal Kuranda after family tensions erupted into a violent street brawl.
Ngoonbi Community Services Indigenous Corporation members have approached parties in an effort to get to the bottom of the violence on Tuesday.
“We have met with one of the groups and we will be assigning some resources to try and deal with it,” acting Ngoonbi CEO Glenys Grogan said.
“A mediation team should have been sent down 12 months ago — we need to figure out what set it off, why they have been fighting.”
Police were called to Thongon St about 12.30pm following reports of a large brawl involving about 40 people.
Four men were arrested with a further two Kuranda men arrested in the last two days.
“Those that have been fighting will get charged and won’t be able to get jobs — this could have been addressed earlier,” Ms Grogan said.
“They are strangers in their own town. The only ones who employ the indigenous are ourselves and Tjapukai. There needs to be a concerted effort by the town to bring the groups together, to start the healing.”
Ideally, she said, an external group such as the Kapani Warriors without ties to family factions would be able to work with the parties.
Kapani is an “anger inoculation program for men” staffed by army veterans and has successfully reduced the rates of domestic violence and public nuisance in communities including Wujal Wujal and Doomadgee.
“They would join our wider network and come out to communities where they’d work to be ready for employment,” Kapani director Dr Tim White said.
“But leading into that is the behaviour management — we are not going to back people who won’t back our ethos.”
The Kapani program is a gruelling three-four month process of skills development, physical training and mentoring designed to break the cycle of violence and crime in indigenous communities.
“This isn’t a case of basket weaving for four hours on a Tuesday,” Dr White said. “It is easy for us to get there, the issue is who will pay for it.”